Every week I choose to take a few minutes to reflect on all that I am thankful for. Well, ten things at least. It helps with my mental health and I do enjoy looking back at photos from the week. This past week has been tricky as my friend passed away a week ago, our house is in reno mode and the kids were needing more activity (and we sorted wanted a break from parenting!). Here are some things that I am thankful for this week:
1. Cousins. We spent a couple of hours at Williams Park some of their cousins while Gary worked back at the house. The kids always have a great time together and I wish we could do this more often.
2. A quick getaway. We went to Cultus Lake to try out my dad's truck and camper. We are trying to figure out the best way to do a long road trip (across Canada) whether it be our minivan with hotels, truck and camper, super small RV...has anyone done it? What did you use? I've gone across twice, once in a truck and camper and once on a train. Not sure what will work best for our family. I really just want beds set up all ready to go each night and not pay a ton in gas.
3. Garage sale finds. I try not to go often because I just purged our house again but I got two body boards and a sled for $1 each so that was good as we had been looking at buying new ones anyway.
4. Fresh fruit. Oh do I love summer food! Big thanks to my friend Leah for picking up peaches for us.
5. Books. This is what I am reading now. I was able go to a workshop put on my Cherilyn Orr on The Stoplight Approach and it was helpful for more insight into self-regulation. Thankful for book club getting me to read books I most definitely would not pick on my own (Hillbilly Elegy). I bought Of Mess and Moxie and am reading it slowly-ish because I don't have to get it back to the library. It is quite similar to For the Love. Finally, I actually hadn't read anything by Anne Lamott before. Wow, can she write or what? The simplest of sentences can make me just stop and go "whoa". For example: "...she drowned in those uncried tears."
6. Quick delivery of our Stand Up Paddleboard. We went through Costco so if anything is wrong with it we can easily return it. It arrived about 36 hours after I ordered it! We had to go in the inflatable route because we do not have a roof rack on our minivan, we'll see how it does.
7. Reno Part 1 done. We knew we wanted to replace our flooring; the laminate was fine but outdated. It actually hid scratches very well because it was so light. Friends recommended vinyl planks and we went with it. This ended up increasing the workload as it's thinner and we wanted to save the baseboards ($$$) so Gary had to fill and sand the lines on the wall, repaint the walls, sand, paint and install baseboards. It took him almost a week to do the entire floor but it looks great! High five, Gary. I will show you a picture of our main floor when our house doesn't look like a disaster. And, in case you are thinking of vinyl flooring, this one actually scratches more than our light laminate so just be warned it's not a magical solution! Finally, I was pretty surprised to see that the cost of new flooring and all the supplies cost us under $2,000! We are still awaiting the special order of transition pieces which will officially finish it off. Oh, part 2? New quartz countertops which we should probably order...
8. Hard working kids! The boys and their two neighbour friends have been searching the alleys every day for recycling for 1-2 hours (they carry a phone, check in at our home frequently, and the neighbour boy is older and responsible). They made $57 at the bottle depot! People saw them collecting and gave them bags of bottles. Why did they want to collect money? For 7-Eleven trips! They've gone twice already and always get one for Nya too.
9. A lunch solution? One struggle I have with the kids' lunches is just the waste of individually wrapped packages and finding tupperware lids for each container. Now I can buy/make snacks in bulk and just toss them in. I'm really hopeful that it works well. I got this in a parent group buy on Facebook in Vancouver if you are interested in joining the group, let me know and I can add you. Here's hoping the Go Green Lunch Box is a win–I'm a tad nervous about Nya and Koen being able to open and close it properly (sounds silly but I don't want a giant disaster in their backpack!).
10. Our Little One coming over for dinner. I took him to the dentist first and then to our home. We miss him so much and are thankful that we can remain in his life as much as we like! I feel like by supporting their family it will help them be able to stay together which is the optimal goal. With the two Littles we had most recently, we see them every couple weeks and just went to one of their birthdays. I love that we haven't had to say a goodbye forever yet. In regards to fostering, we are taking September completely off as we'll be transitioning Nya into part time kindergarten and I hope to substitute teach more than once a week. Honestly, I'm very fearful to be "stuck" again and we don't have the physical support that so many people do. Even in life (for example when at swimming lessons or bike camp this week) many people have grandparents helping left, right and centre and this is not the case for us; I understand that travel, distance and age makes it tricky. Our siblings are also very busy with their own families (understandably) so the only kind of physical suupport we get is that which we pay for. It means we can't foster more than one child and that the needs cannot be too great. We'll see...I know we are meant to foster and I want to but I need to make sure that I have support in place BEFOREHAND because once you're in it, you're in. Oh, and when fostering, we aren't able to help out with our first Little One as much which is a priority. Phew, sorry. That was long.
There ya go. A lot to be thankful for amongst the chaos. What is something that you are thankful for today?
Love,
Louise
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